Into Dust
by The Hobbit's Rhapsody
Summary: The air is still again; war has blotted out all sound but that of my army marching up the stairs to her lone figure. Why is she silent now? — The final moments of Charn, before the Deplorable Word, from the perspective of Jadis' unnamed sister. Oneshot.


**A/N: _The Chronicles of Narnia_, its plot, and its characters are the creation of C. S. Lewis. I technically own one tiny OC in this oneshot and a few minor interpretative details, but Lewis' estate owns everything else, and I'm not making profit off anything here.**

**Also, verb tense errors have now been rectified.**

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><p>Jadis' head always has been in the clouds.<p>

Of course, if Jadis heard me say that, she would try to take it literally. _Queen_ Jadis, the one who stood above everything, she of the "high and lonely destiny"—a phrase she has always been fond of repeating.

My sister is a fool. She is powerful, this would be brainless of anyone to deny; but her notion of State and magic as the highest plane of existence will be—has already been—her downfall. She does not understand the necessity of skirting fair play, the value of the straight-faced lie. In our youth, her uprightness destroyed her, and in this war, her resources have failed her. The capital itself is dying at every moment, blood pouring through the streets and rivers at her command. We woke this morning to find sound almost quenched by the sheer monolithic presence of death.

All because of her stubborn, absurd pride.

The terrace of the palace stands three hundred paces above me; the stairs lead up to the great palace in a ziggurated ribbon of charred gold. The diamond rails gleam, seemingly untouched by the blood that clogs the air we breathe. I can see her silhouette, just barely.

The dreams of holding the greatest seat of power in the cosmos belong to both of us, perhaps; but the seat itself is to be mine alone. This day will make sure of that.

"My lady. We stand ready."

Feynas. He stands at my right shoulder, a step behind me, cloaked in azure. His deference to me is not born of respect for me; I am not foolish enough to believe that. His eyes, like steel and slate, masking the storm that never shows, are fixed on my cheekbones, not quite daring to meet my gaze. Had all gone as he desired, he would be standing at the top of these steps right now, glaive and spells at the ready…to be unleashed in my face, in the defense of my sister.

Jadis needed no one, she had always said, and so she had told him. If she had any concept that it was Feynas' heart at stake as much as his sense of duty, she gave no indication. I at least promised him a fair chance at life if he took my side.

I can see it now, in those grey eyes—he may love me in deed, but in heart he will always be my sister's. When this is over, and I have destroyed her, he may forget, with time, but I do not think he will ever forgive me.

Oh, but no matter; despite the watery, insipid strain of royal blood in his veins, a consort's heart is a small enough price to pay for my queendom.

Whispering the command word for my soldiers to move forward, I tighten my knuckles about the golden misericorde in my hand. I can almost hear the sun gleaming off its blade. My army lurches into movement all at once, frothing around me in the movements ordained to them by my will. Upwards we move, steady and relentless, a force that cannot be withheld now. I have been waiting months to make this march. My hand trembles around my knife.

Jadis is fixated on her fate. I cannot yet see them, but I feel them: her eyes burn down on me, eerie and terrible, like the ebony of the magical torc she wears about her throat—our father's last gift to her, that stores a thousand secrets she would die to keep from me. I relish the thought, for a brief an fantastic moment, of slicing it from her neck, and how it will feel when placed about my own.

For a moment I do not breathe, suddenly wary of her straight spine. Why does she simply _wait_? Does she not know what comes upon her? Could she be mad-minded, not to see me, not to see Feynas, not to see the host of loyal subjects at my back, every one of them ready to tear her to pieces? Why does she not unleash her powers? Her armies are dead, every single man of them vanquished. Why does she not fight back?

No wind stirs her robes, or her hair. Nothing, it would seem, stirs her ice-and-flint composure.

An answer stirs in my thoughts even as my feet rise another step—a thought I never bothered to give credence to, but I linger over it now, for the briefest instant:

The Great Secret. Does Jadis know it? She has often hinted that she has…but not even Jadis would sacrifice the world for power. She would have nothing left. No, not even Jadis is such a fool as that.

Her face is in my view, now. I sigh involuntarily at the sight of it. I loved that face, once. Jadis was beautiful to me when I was a child; she had been a princess whom I would have served with all my heart when she succeeded our mother as Queen and Sorceress of the House.

But hearts change. Neither of ours had survived the childhood allotted to those of royal blood, and this reckoning had been many years in the coming.

"Victory!" The word leaps from my lips, and I feel the carefully orchestrated pride of my army swell behind me.

The smell of the war is thick in my throat, and the sun is garishly hot. I imagine the cool bath I will run in the palace after I have overthrown her from my throne.

"Yes," she says coldly.

Feynas' breath hitches behind my ear. I nearly turn and look at him—what does he know? Why is she…

"Victory," she says again, and then there is that horrible, wicked grin I have long since learned to despise. "But not yours."

My heart stops its beating, then, and I have only half an instant to realize the truth. My sister truly is a fool, I understand…and so, perhaps, am I.

She opens her mouth, and it is as if all the Death that has hung about the corners of the city, sleeping in my bed, clinging to my armor, gathers itself at once and takes her shape, staring me in the face.

_Something_, a force horrific, inexorable and instantaneous, swifter than thought, swifter than life, swifter than I thought death could be—

—shatters the sun—

—

_finis_


End file.
